The Fae Prince Who Bought My Name

The shears bent on a seam that had no business being stronger than steel.

Wren stopped with both hands still on the handles. Beneath the workroom lamp, the lower blade had acquired a shallow hook. She laid it against her measuring rule, hoping the lamplight had lied. It had not. The gap was wide enough to admit a pin.

Iona Reed stood on the fitting stool in her stockings, holding the wedding skirt away from her knees. “Was that supposed to happen?”

“Only if you intend to marry an anvil.”

“He sells maps. He's very soft.”

Wren tried to smile. Good shears cost a crown and a half; these had taken seven years of sharpening to become an extension of her hand. At twenty-nine she knew better than to force unfamiliar work. She had forced it because the rent was due in three days, because the last six crowns on Iona's invoice would meet it, and because she had already spent an afternoon persuading forty-year-old silk to behave like new silk.

“Stay still a moment.” She slid her fingers under the lining, careful of the broken blade. Along the inside hem, a silver ridge followed the old stitches. The dress had belonged to Wren's grandmother before it became household cloth, stored against damp and poverty. Iona had bought the outer silk from them in summer. The lining was Wren's contribution, a cheaper alternative to the imported stuff Iona could not afford.

She had promised it would wear safely.

“There was no metal on the cutting table,” Wren said.

Iona looked down. “Can you leave the hem longer?”

“It catches your instep already.”

“I can lift it.”

Wren pictured a woman climbing the quay steps with two hands full of wedding skirt, no hand left for the slippery rail. She set the shears out of reach.

“You can lift it here. At your wedding you'll be carrying flowers, and people will insist on hugging you while you walk. I need to find out what this is.”

“Tomorrow was the last fitting.”

“I know.”

The shop clock ticked over the kitchen noises above them. Rain scraped the front windows. On the sill, a little dish collected a leak that Wren had been promising to mend since September. Its patient dripping made the delay seem deliberate.

Iona let the skirt fall. “Wren, I have paid for half this dress. I can't buy another one.”

“I'm not asking you to.”

“Then tell me when.”

That deserved an answer better than optimism. Wren fetched her chalk and marked the existing hem at six points, recording Iona's shoe height on the paper fitting sheet. The woman held still, watching her. Wren could set a new plain lining within two days if the silver came free without tearing the silk. She had enough cotton lawn in the cabinet, but it was reserved for three paid shirt repairs.

“Come tomorrow afternoon. I'll have either a safe dress or a precise repair plan. You needn't pay the balance tonight.”

Iona's shoulders lowered, though her mouth remained tight. “If it's a plan, I'll want it in writing.”

“So will I.”

Wren helped her out of the skirt and bodice. The stays had left pink stripes on Iona's sides; she had been standing too long. Wren should have offered a chair before the money entered the conversation. She turned away while Iona put on her everyday dress, then wrote a receipt acknowledging the deposit already paid and the balance withheld pending safe delivery.

The pen snagged on a rough fiber. Her own name went across the page crookedly, entirely legible.

Iona took the receipt. “I was going to bring you a slice of the cake.”

“I'm still willing to work for money.”

“You'd get both, if you finish.”

After she left, Wren hung the bodice on a padded hanger and spread the skirt inside out. Her mother came down carrying a mug and the little brown medicine bottle. Mara descended sideways when her lungs were troublesome, one hand on the rail, although she denied doing it.

“Customer gone?” she asked.

“Without paying.”

Mara set the mug beyond the cloth. “You shouldn't let people do that.”

Wren raised the ruined shears.

Her mother reached for them, then stopped. The medicine bottle clicked against the mug. She was fifty-six, with a narrow face that could go abruptly old when she thought nobody was looking.

“Where did you cut?”

“I tried to take off the excess lining. Do you know this seam?”

Mara bent over it. Her sleeve brushed the table edge, dragging a dusting of flour from supper. Wren moved the clean silk away from the flour and watched her mother trace three short stitches with a finger.

“I thought you'd taken all that out.”

“Taken what out?”

“The old repairs.”

“This isn't an old repair. The thread crosses my basting.”

Wren had used blue basting thread three weeks ago. The silver passed over it at one corner and beneath it at the next. Someone had worked on the lining after she prepared it, while it was stored in the kitchen chest. She looked toward the stairs.

Mara sat down.

“There was a notice,” she said.

Wren waited. Her mother examined a crack in the mug's glaze.

“From the court lending office. Ten days ago. They sent the lining back from the wardrobe dealer with a paper sewn inside. I couldn't get the binding open. I thought—”

“You put it back in the chest.”

“Yes.”

The admission landed more heavily than an argument. Wren fetched the narrow embroidery scissors, an awl and a white saucer. She made herself place them in order. Anger was a poor guide to fine work, but arranging tools gave it something harmless to do.

“What lending office?”

“Nacre. The treatment money.”

Wren put the awl down again. “You said the clinic arranged assistance.”

“They arranged a loan.”

“How much?”

“Eighteen crowns.”

The stair rail creaked in the settling house. Outside, a barrow rattled through a puddle. Wren heard both sounds with absurd clarity while calculating fourteen months of payments that had never appeared in their accounts.

“When is it due?”

“Tomorrow. At dawn.”

“And you were going to tell me when?”

Mara coughed into her sleeve. Wren reached automatically for the mug, then caught herself holding it too hard. She loosened her fingers and passed it over. Whatever her mother had done, breath was still necessary.

“I meant to sell the machine,” Mara said after drinking. “That's what I pledged. Household equipment. I thought the dealer would take it. He said the feed teeth were worn and nobody wanted a treadle that skipped.”

“The machine paid for your medicine last week.”

“I know what it does.”

There was enough pride in that to sting. Mara had sewn piecework on it before her damaged lungs made lint a daily punishment. Wren had inherited the bills before she inherited the trade.

She sat opposite her mother. “I need the papers.”

“They're upstairs.”

“The original agreement. Every receipt. Not an explanation of what you remember.”

Mara looked up. “You think I signed something worse.”

“I don't know what you signed. That's the trouble.”

When Mara climbed upstairs, Wren began at the corner where the silver crossed her blue thread. Cutting had failed; unpicking might still work. She lifted the outer stitch with the awl and followed its return under the lining. It doubled back through a loop so small she needed the lamp closer. Someone had used a binding pattern, the sort intended to preserve a credential seam through laundering. She had seen similar work on court uniforms sent for ordinary alterations. It was physical reinforcement, not the comforting charge she sometimes put into cloth.

She could stitch a donated feeling into a cuff if the cloth held enough of it. She could not ask a dress who had touched it.

The first loop released after six minutes. She placed the silver scrap in the saucer rather than dropping it on the floor. A needle appeared, embedded lengthwise in the facing. Beyond it lay an edge of folded paper.

Mara returned with a tin box. Its contents were household receipts, a clinic card and an agreement secured with two small brass pins. Wren resisted opening it until she freed the paper in the hem. Her hands were steady now, made stubborn by the problem.

Near the side seam she found a copper tag, no larger than her thumbnail. Two rows of double backstitch surrounded it. That section was older; its thread had dulled to the color of rainwater. The fresh silver notice-binding ran around it, preserving the tag while fixing the paper against the lining.

Wren unpicked the old cotton attaching the tag and put it beside the saucer. On one face was a shallow wheel, on the other three tiny punched marks. Her grandmother had marked tools with wheels. Wren remembered sitting under her workbench, sorting buttons into lids while the old woman argued with ferry men about invoices.

The paper came free with a smell of damp starch.

“Collection notice,” Wren read. “Number four hundred and seventeen. Household treatment advance. Surety credential: Wren.”

Her mother pushed back from the table. “No.”

“It says my name.”

“I never pledged you.”

Wren read the sentence again. Below it, a stamped flower had one uneven petal. The instructions required the named surety to present herself for identity collection at dawn if eighteen crowns remained unpaid.

She opened Mara's agreement. The first page described a treatment advance. The second named household equipment and referred to an attached collateral inventory. There was no inventory in the box.

“Where's the last page?”

“They kept it to make a copy.”

Wren pressed her thumb against the two pinholes along the edge. One had been widened. That might mean nothing; papers were handled, pins replaced. It did not mean she could afford to assume the notice was accurate.

She folded a clean sheet around it and wrote the time of removal from the dress. Then she put the tag in her apron pocket and covered Iona's skirt against dust.

“We go to a registrar,” she said.

“At this hour?”

The shop clock showed eleven. Oda Pell's kiosk had been shuttered since supper. Wren could knock at her lodgings, if she knew which upper window was hers.

Before she could find her coat, the court mirror above the counter clicked.

Its copper frame held a small certification bead, installed so customers could validate receipts. Wren had never enjoyed the mirror's courteous voice. Tonight it sounded as smooth as wet soap.

“Notice four hundred and seventeen acknowledged. A credential purchaser will attend before dawn.”

“Acknowledged by whom?” Wren demanded.

The glass reflected a tired woman with chalk on her skirt. It offered no answer.

Wren pulled the dust cover over it, then went to bolt the front door. She left the lamp burning. Whoever was coming would have to knock.